So, if you’re down in the dumps because you live in a country where one of the craziest and corrupt people in the nation runs the country, and a few million people really think that’s cool, you can take a breath.
No, sorry. President Donald Trump isn’t resigning or being forced out by his slightly more sane and cogent cabinet using the 25th Amendment. Yet.
But despite what you think, he’s not the most whack dude in the nation to seek or get an important government job. That moniker falls to the two conservatives trying to win the Colorado governor’s seat this fall.
First, Colorado Republicans chose Victor “Bang Bang” Marx as the GOP standard carrier to run against the Democrats’ choice of Attorney General Phil “Yawn” Weiser.
But this week, in a replay of recent Colorado history, Republican former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez, shed his GOP cloak but not his history and got himself on the ballot to run against Marx and Weiser for Colorado governor.
Of course you know who Greg “Make It Stop” Lopez is. He was kinda recently back in the news, and not for any criminal accusations or charges.
Oh, yes, the former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez who filled in as a GOP congressman for House District 4 while Rep. Lauren Boebert finished her carpetbagger act from the Western Slope to the GOP stronghold of the nation in northeast Colorado.
He’s the same George Lopez who ran unsuccessfully against fellow Republican Heidi Ganahl for the party nod to run for governor in 2022.
During that campaign, Lopez scored points among many mega MAGA Trumpers in places like Texas and Florida by insisting that all Colorado abortions should be illegal, even if they were needed to save the life of the mother.
That might not sound so harsh from a man who rationalizes a 1993 domestic violence episode with his then-pregnant wife.
The Denver Post, the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, 9News and others repeatedly wrote about the assault, which Lopez admits to but explains away as an episode of young love. He was 29.
He and his wife were arguing when she hit him over the head, according to police reports. He then pushed her down, kicked her and pulled her by the hair, according to the charging report.
He, and his wife, have since said there was no hair pulling. He regularly points out that they both were ticketed. He was accused of assault. She was accused of harassment.
So sweet. Lopez calls it a live and learn situation.
That’s essentially how he also referred to his DUI charge in 2003.
It’s less clear how Lopez codifies his run-in with federal prosecutors. Lopez was forced out of his appointed high-level SBA role in 2014. In 2020, he settled a Department of Justice civil case against him for $15,000 after being accused of trying to “exert improper influence over a federal agency on behalf of his friend” according to DOJ records.
But wait. Lopez insists that Marx is so nuts and unqualified that he has no choice but to drop his GOP affiliation and run for governor as an independent to save conservatism and Colorado.
If this is ringing a bell, he’s picking up the Congressman Tom Tancredo and his tale of saving conservatism in Colorado by dropping his GOP identity, like he did in 2010 to run for governor as an independent against then the craziest guy in the room, Dan Maes.
Look it up.
So Lopez, who couldn’t talk voters out of supporting Heidi “Grrrrrr” Ganahl for governor, is convinced he can sway what’s left of the GOP electorate away from Marx.
This is either going to be really funny or really sad or really scary.
In case you forgot already, Marx is the guy who started out his tale of “whoa” with a story about being forced as a 7-year-old to hold a gun against a man’s head and pull the trigger. The moment was the climax of what he said was years of abuse by a step-dad in Louisiana.
“If you ever tell anyone what I’ve done to you, it doesn’t matter how old you get, he said, I’ll tell the police that you killed this man, and I have the pistol with your fingerprint on it. And he said, they’ll electrocute you. And I knew what electrocution was, ‘cause he’d done it a few times. And so, it sealed and instilled in me a fear where I never talked about that ‘til I was an adult.
No evidence of the killing has ever been produced.
There’s no need to look for evidence in the killings of other people he may or may not have wasted since then, which he wanted to talk about a few weeks ago, just not in detail, and now, not at all.
His paying job is that of a “high-risk” missionary that risks his life to save victims of war and trafficking, raising and spending millions to provide about 67,000 stuffed animals to kids in war-torn countries. Not only does he traffic in weird exaggerations about his life, he dabbles in exorcisms, too, he told Next on 9News host Kyle Clark.
He said he asks possessed people to let him talk to their demons and then tells them to get out of their victims, which they do and “ban them to perfect judgment from Christ.”
I’m being generous by suggesting that Marx and Lopez will be splitting about 2%-%3 of the vote this Nov. 3.
No doubt, Weiser can plainly see that he won the “can’t fail” election lottery here, as can we all.
So between now and Election Day, we can ask Weiser about who he’s going to appoint to cabinet posts, what kind of chair he likes in the top office under the gold dome, and bills he thinks he will and won’t sign.
And, we can relax just a little, knowing that as bad as Trump is, he’s not Marx or Lopez.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com